When Someone You Love Is Unhappy

A patient of mine has a mentally ill brother who's depressed and anxious, as well as manipulative and stubborn. He often refuses to take medication that's helped him in the past and as a result often ends up lying at home in his bed, unwashed and unkempt, for days at a time. When my friend discovers him in this state, she tries various things: taking him to the ER (which she's learned leads nowhere), contacting his therapist (which sometimes helps, sometimes not), and even walking away, both figuratively and literally. She struggles with how much she may be enabling his behavior and with how unhappy his unhappiness is making her. She vents to me on occasion, and I try to walk a fine line between encouraging her not to give up on him and supporting her decision to protect herself emotionally. Recently, he had a particularly bad episode and it got me wondering: how can we best manage the unhappiness of people we love?

Love leads to many things good and bad but perhaps one of the most challenging is the way it links our happiness to the happiness of others. This connection largely explains why we often become frustrated or angry with the ones we love: in loving them, we frequently come to feel they're actually a part of us, and if they behave in a way we don't like, we feel an urge to put a stop to their behavior as if it were our own; their behavior may wound us and directly injure our own happiness, and our attempts to change it may be motivated out of a desire to make ourselves happy; and finally, we may genuinely respect the lives of those we love as distinctly separate from ours but feel frustrated or angry that they're acting in a way we think will harm their happiness.

HOW WE SHOULD APPROACH THE UNHAPPINESS OF OTHERS

First and foremost, we must realize that everyone is ultimately responsible for their own happiness and simultaneously that everyone exerts a powerful influence on the happiness of those around them. A study by a former colleague, Nicholas Christakis, suggests that we influence the happiness of people close to us physically as well as the happiness of people close to us personally up to three degrees of separation (meaning not just the friends of our friends but their friends as well). How might this influence come about? Not by the advice we give or the action we take to try to make others happier but simply by being happy ourselves. Emotions, it turns out, are as contagious as infectious diseases (possibly as a result of the mirror neuron system). Some of us seem to be more contagious than others and some of us especially susceptible to being "infected" by others, but most of us have had firsthand experience in bringing others up or down with our moods and in being brought up or down by the moods of others.

The most effective way to help others become happier, then, very well may be by focusing on becoming happy ourselves. This may strike some as selfish, but we can easily imagine flowing readily from our own happiness a heightened ability to encourage, support, and inspire. One strategy we shouldn't adopt, no matter how tempting it may be, is to give our unhappy loved ones what they ask for automatically without carefully considering the consequences. What unhappy people want is so often not what they need that this knee-jerk approach must in the end be considered unwise at best. We may feel impelled to give them what they want by our own sense of urgency to pry them out of whatever unhappy box they're in. But this urge often rises from our discomfort, not theirs, and causes us to suspend our good judgment in favor of what seems expedient.

To counteract this impulse, remember that suffering is necessary for growth (I'm not pointing this out to rationalize suffering, but rather to suggest our focus should be on using it as a catalyst). If we can resist the impulse to treat suffering like a fire that must be extinguished immediately, we can consider with a clear mind how to best respond to the unhappiness of the ones we love. But if instead we give in to our impulse to take over responsibility for someone else's suffering, we may find ourselves cheating them out of an important growth experience. True happiness comes from strength. If we solve every problem for the ones we love, how will they ever learn to solve problems themselves?

HOW WE SHOULD PROTECT OURSELVES

Often, however, the people we love behave as if they don't want to feel better. They want to wallow, or are so debilitated by their suffering they can't even get out of bed—like my patient's brother. Sometimes the unhappiness of the ones we love is like a black hole, threatening to pull us into darkness ourselves. How can we orbit around such a strong negative force without being crushed by it ourselves?

It's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle our mood from a loved one's mood without swinging too far in the other direction, becoming disinterested and emotionally cut off as a means of self-preservation. Living with an unhappy person is, in many ways, like living with someone who's ill: the illness is theirs, but the experience belongs to the caregiver as well. Thinking of a loved one's unhappiness as an illness brings to mind some points I made in an earlier post, The Caregiver's Manifesto, that, in modified form, may apply:

Maintain appropriate boundaries. Remind yourself constantly that your loved one's unhappiness is not your own. You may become unhappy in response to their unhappiness, but your unhappiness then becomes your responsibility. You will be tempted to resolve your unhappiness by trying to resolve their unhappiness (not to mention, in a time frame that suits you), but that way leads only to frustration and resentment. Treat the two as separate things that require separate solutions.

Allow your loved one space to be unhappy. People often become unhappy for good reasons, i.e., as a result of a blow or a loss of some kind. After a while, most people most of the time (though, it's important to note, not all the time) find their level of happiness returning to its baseline. Be patient. You often don't need to do anything at all but tolerate their dip in mood. If you're dealing with someone who dips frequently or regularly, learn to recognize the signs. Dialogue with them when they're in a good place to ask how you can best support them when they're in a bad place. Then try out their suggestion. It may work—or it may not. If it doesn't—if they don't know themselves how they should be supported—try other things until you hit on what works best.

Give yourself space from them. When people are unhappy, being around them is difficult. In giving them space, you give yourself space as well. Don't fall into the trap of thinking they need you around all the time to handle their unhappy feelings.

Defend your own happiness fiercely. Misery may think it loves company, but in the long term it doesn't. It's more than just all right to remain happy while someone you love is miserable: it's imperative.

Suggest professional help. When things seem not be returning to normal, sometimes consulting a professional brings new clarity to the problem.

Detach with love. Sometimes people are simply toxic by nature, a fact that often dawns on others around them only after time. Sometimes people refuse to take steps to make themselves feel better. As a result, sometimes you have to love them from a distance. This can be an intensely difficult decision, but sometimes it's the right one. Give yourself permission to entertain the thought and consider it seriously if consider it seriously you should.

My patient found herself thinking about detaching from her brother frequently, and in fact would do so for long stretches of time. But then she'd learn he'd locked himself in his house for days and couldn't stop herself from being drawn back into his life. After this last episode, however, she found herself more focused on maintaining a safe emotional distance. She still cared, she confided to me, but had come to a new understanding about her limitations. She knew some part of her brother still wanted to be happy, but it seemed covered up by a part that reveled in misery. She would keep tabs on him, she decided, and intervene when he seemed in real danger, but she refused to continue suffering on account of his suffering. Which for her meant allowing him to suffer alone.

I was reading your blog and your patient's brother sounds so much like mine. It's so frustrating and heartbreaking, especially when there are children involved. I try to maintain some distance but it never works out. HIs kids or my mom beg me to do something, go see him, try to get through to him, help him somehow.I just keep getting frug back into his mess.

You mentioned someone going through a period of suffering in their life that they need time to get through (so this suffering is not permanent) and individuals who might have frequent dips in mood. I have a question about individuals who have a condition they have been affected by for a long time and will probably stay with them for the rest of their life. My mother has had what appears to me to be borderline personality disorder and/or bipolar disorder for the past 23 years since I was born. How much responsibility is placed on the person for their behavior who has difficulty controlling their moods? My mother can obviously control her behavior around strangers (maybe she is around strangers in times of better mood), but I see her take out her emotions, problems, aggressions in private on her caregivers (my grandfather and grandmother). She is not able to take responsibility for her actions at all and is not expected to by her caregivers. Is this appropriate? Is it appropriate to forgive her behavior in every instance? Or to hold her accountable for her actions? Should her rude behavior, explosive emotions, inability to listen be excused as something she has no control over? Or should the person be held accountable for certain aspects of her behavior? This is difficult for me to deal with because my emotions in response to her behavior when I am around her get discounted by my grandparents because they use the model where she "is not able to control herself at all so she must be forgiven in all circumstances". Is this model of forgiving every circumstance appropriate? Thank your for your response.

I know this is a late response but I still wanted to comment. My mother was diagnosed bipolar when I was 12 - I am 36 now - but I suspect she suffers from borderline personality disorder (BPD) too.

God help the adult child who shows happiness around a BPD mother. Maintaining one's own happiness despite a loved one's unhappiness may help sometimes, but my BPD mother seemed to take my happiness as a personal insult. She squelched times that should have been joyous (e.g., high school graduation) with cruel words and attention-seeking behavior. If that didn't work, she'd find a way to "up the ante." Last year she called me on my 35th birthday and announced "it's all downhill after forty." I thought she was just teasing me, so I teased back: "That's not what I heard." Her way to up the ante was to send me an email telling me that she and my father never wanted to hear from me again.

And so I've detached. Completely. Changed my phone number and my email address and even my name. I've reached a point where I consider her unsafe for me. I am sorry she's such an unhappy, bitter, miserable person, but I am done with being punished for being a generally upbeat, generally sane person.

You can't control how your grandparents interact with your mother - it's their choice. How you interact with your mother is YOUR choice.

Alex says to be prepared for resistance to any changes you make - I respectfully say that's a huge understatement. Be ready to lose your entire family when you make changes in how you relate to your mother. Sounds dramatic, I know. Maybe you won't lose them all. I still have an uncle, an aunt, and a cousin who exchange holiday and birthday cards with me. But if you do lose them, considering how your grandparents and mother already invalidate your feelings, you might find the loss to be not as great as you feared.

Heartbreaking to hear of your situation. But sometimes another person's dysfunction is so great, interactions with them so poisonous, that the best thing really is to detach with love (if you can manage that last part). I'm sorry it came to that for you, but hope you find a better life because of it.

You describe a difficult situation. I don't think anyone can CONTROL their emotions but I'm convinced they can INFLUENCE them (by which I mean work to make them more positive—but not by simply deciding to make them more positive). All human beings have executive functions that can, most of the time, mute the effect of negative emotions on behavior (e.g., we can get angry but choose not to yell or hit).

I've also observed that how people behave is profoundly influenced by the people who surround them. Thus, for example, your mom may be well-behaved around strangers but not around family. Her executive functions are more engaged due to her thinking about strangers compared to her thinking about her family.

As you've described her (and this isn't necessarily true for everyone who suffers from mental illness), your mom seems capable of appropriate behavior in the right circumstances and therefore is responsible for her behavior. My suggestion is that you and your family examine the attitudes you display about your expectations for her behavior. I suspect, based on your description, that you're all enabling bad behavior on her part. When you stand up and demand, via your actions, good behavior, if a person is capable of delivering it, they often do. You might find this link helpful: http://www.happinessinthisworld.com/2009/10/18/how-to-communicate-with-your-life/

Thank you for your reply. I have brought up the possibility with my grandfather about how my mother is capable of controlling her behavior around us but he chooses to believe that she does not have control over her actions. My grandmother also does not want to talk about the topic since this is the way she has chosen to view her daughter's behavior (having no control) and has for a long time. I have brought it up before and at the risk of having a fight I have not chosen to bring it up with her again. I remember trying to talk about the subject in high school and it was something not to be talked about, so I left the subject when I left for college for the past five years. Now I am back home while looking for work and I am faced with the same situation.
I admit not bringing up the topic again at this point because of my own lack of courage. I am not in an environment where I can sit down with my grandparents and have a discussion about my attitude and their attitude about my mother's behavior and illness. It seems to be treated as a taboo subject. I agree that I have been enabling her behavior more than I should out of my own fear of being reprimanded by my grandparents while I am staying in the household. I try to stand up when I can but I place myself in a position where I pick and choose which of my mother's behavior is acceptable and which isn't based on the belief of my grandparents instead of my own. I am struggling to redefine her illness for myself instead of using the model of my grandparents. It is difficult to be in a situation where standing up and saying we are enabling her behavior is actually seen as the disruptive behavior. I am told that by standing up to her that I am the one creating trouble and causing them problems (because they allow her to run back to them and complain and cause tantrums). So I submit out of my own fear that I am making the lives of the caregivers more difficult. Unfortunately I think they are making it difficult for themselves by allowing her to complain to them and enabling her behavior. I do not know what to do in this situation.

You're in a tough spot. The thing about enabling behavior is that superficially it makes things easier, so people who enable remain attached to doing it. If you decide you shouldn't enable your mom's behavior (and I'm in no position to judge one way or another) it seems to me the key would be becoming confident enough in that decision (out of a genuine and well-considered belief that enabling her behavior isn't in her or your best interests) that you simply—without ever needing to discuss it—stop enabling her behavior. Such a change would of course be met with resistance that you'd need to be prepared for, which is why you must first be absolutely convinced your decision is the right one and then calmly stick to your guns (keeping your own emotions at bay would be key). Good luck.

After making us spend our savings on him in rehab several times, taking him to school and dropping out (5 in total), going to prison and countless other miseries, us, our family decided to dump my brother and purge him out of our lives. We needed to do that for our own sanity. He started to affect our work, I for one would wake up and cry for hours. It was terrible his addiction to drugs and all. In the end he went to live far far away and after 4 long years of suffering not being able to buy food, live or anything he came and he was reformed. We all thought it was one of his silly apologies to get us to take him back only to go through the same cycle but this time he has changed after 10 years. He is back doing is A levels, the oldest in his class but next year he will go to uni and he has changed. We still do not believe it so we approach cautiously lest we get burnt again!

Hello, Alex.
So what is your recommendation for someone who finds herself married to a perpetually unhappy person? Things seem to have gotten worse after the birth of our child who is 20 months. He complains about everything, including the 3 mile commute from work, daily. He also has anger issues, which he is working on, but he is simply unhappy.
When I have discussed this with him, his response is why is happiness so important? He considers himself to be middle of the road, neither happy nor unhappy and has recently told me he has never been happy...never in our 13 years of marriage - talk about a wakeup call! I found that to be so distressing!
He told me he has incredibly high expectations for the world and the world simply doesn't meet them. He feels that he needs to hold people accountable to higher expectations and believes the world is "dumbing down", going to a more mediocre way of thinking. After he said that, I asked him why he doesn't change his expectations, if he knows no one will live up to them, wouldn't having lower expectations and having people meet them make him happier? He told me perhaps, but he is unwilling to do that because then the world would win, and he wouldn't be keeping his beliefs. Aaargh!
We travel a lot - or did before the birth of our little one, and at the beginning, all was well with the world, but now, for a couple of days before the flights, he starts getting antsy and talking about how much he hates flying. He often says things just on the edge of hearing, under his breath, but things that make me flush with embarrassment with their negativity or derogatory manner about flight attendants, etc. On our last flight, he was simply angry before we ever made it to the airport and was gruff and his eyebrows were furrowed and seemed defensive. We got our boarding passes. He said, I just hate flying. I asked him why he was so upset, when everything had gone wonderfully in my mind. He told me things always go wrong - - - This is NOT the perspective or attitude I want for my daughter. I don't want her to hate flying before we even get into the air.
I completely agree with what you said when you said: "everyone exerts a powerful influence on the happiness of those around them." To be honest, I have been told that I am happy to a fault. I can find joy in almost anything. I am a very happy person and I find your article to have very good points and I appreciate your steps to protect yourself.
In our 13 years of marriage, my husband has had 6 jobs - I think he is always searching for something and simply not finding it. We've also literally travelled the world. (Which was his goal.) Recently, in the last few months, he lamented that we traveled as much as we did because we don't have anything to show for it, and here we are still renting and not owning a house. He is frustrated we spent the money on the travels, rather than buying a house.
So, my question is, where does that leave my daughter and me? I want more than anything for him to be happy and for us to be a happy family, but I worry about the fragility of my daughter's happiness if she is around a perpetually unhappy father. He has told me that she is calms him down...What is my best coarse of action to protect my daughter from unhappiness?
Thank you in advance for your response!

Wow, a lot going on here. My sense is that your husband may be depressed (or at least dysthymic) and that a lot of his negative thinking flows from that. Or, if not depressed, significantly unhappy, as he says himself. There may be one thing, or just a few things, that have landed him there that he either hasn't acknowledged to you, or hasn't even acknowledged to himself. Resetting expectations is a powerful technique to enhance resilience and reduce suffering (I discuss it at length in my book, The Undefeated Mind), and can be done without it meaning that "the world has won." That he's had 6 jobs in the last 13 years and that you sense he's always been "searching for something and simply not finding it" suggests he may be trapped in what Buddhism calls the world of Hunger. At the heart of this state of life lies a belief that if only we could fulfill our desires (whatever they happen to be) we will find long-lasting happiness. But of course, no desire provides that, so such people find themselves trapped feeling continual dissatisfaction with life in general. If he hasn't tried therapy, I'd strongly suggest it. He may have reconciled himself to life of minimal enjoyment, but you clearly haven't. If he won't do it for himself, perhaps he will for you and your daughter. Good luck.

Thank you, Alex, for your prompt response! Yes, I can see in my husband a world of hunger...never quite getting what he wants to make him happy. Sadly, I haven't helped - he wants to spend a lot of money on a new recliner so he can read his books. I ask him if it will make him happy, and he says yes, and alas, of course, in due time, it does not, which really shouldn't surprise me.
I have asked him numerous times to go to marriage counseling, even telling him once that I thought he should go to anger management. Sadly, he has no respect for therapy or therapists in general...the derogatory comments make me sad. Since I majored in Psych and Education, I asked him what he respects about me, since he makes fun of my Educ background and he doesn't believe in or respect Psych. He told me he respects the way I raise our daughter and my baking. During that discussion, I told him I was going to go to counseling one way or another. We had a stare-down and he asked me why I thought I needed to go. I told him I just did. I emailed him a passage on psychotherapy and wrote: You asked me why go to counseling, here are some thoughts. I will be making an appointment to go hopefully this week and would love it if you want to join me, but understand if you don't want to. If nothing else, I want to get my ducks in a row so I can raise our daughter in the best way possible! Let me know if you'd like to come with me...A week ago, I told him I went to my first counseling session and I'd love it if you want to join me for the next one. He said, Haven't we already had this conversation? I said, yes. I just wanted to let you know that I went. He said, Great. What's this going to cost us? I then told him I had 5 free sessions and then we'd have to pay, then I chatted with our daughter and that was the end of that...
I feel as if I'm walking on egg shells, trying not to anger him or make him more unhappy - I'm always filtering what I say before I say it (it was a really big struggle for me to tell him out loud that I was going to counseling)...I don't want our daughter to filter what she says, or try to make him happy all the time as well, since I know it is unhealthy. The other day, he came home from work and asked her to give him a hug - he stood by the door. She started walking toward him, all happy and ready to give a hug, but she got interested in the vacuum cleaner and he said, daddy's not interested in the vacuum cleaner. You need to come over and give me a hug. Daddy's been at work all day and wants a hug. - - - I reminded him that she's a toddler and she
was on her way to give him a hug, but got side tracked. I then helped her to walk to daddy to give him a hug.
I know this doesn't sound good, but to contemplate divorce scares me, because at least when I'm here, if he gets frustrated with her, or expects her to act a certain way, I can swoop in and take her away/calm the situation down.
Visitation without me around scares me, especially if he goes down the angry road again, or simply the unhappiness road. The other day, he told me he failed at his workout goal. I said, well, at least you tried! He said he got close to his goal, but failed - he was 6 seconds off of the goal - we had a discussion about failure/trying your best is success...I worry for my daughter that this will be his perspective - He quoted Yoda - there is no try, do or do not...He told me we have different point of views and he didn't want to get into an argument about it. The only reason I held my ground and talked with him about it at all is b/c I worry that my daughter will be seen as a failure at some point. He tried and succeeded in keeping it a pleasant discussion. But the perspective scares me, especially if I am not there to remind my daughter that (if something similar happens to her) she is a success - just for trying her best!
So, how do you protect a child whether under the same roof or not, from the negative attitude? I will look up your book, thank you for the recommendation. On a side note, he has started reading a meditation book and it has helped immensely with his anger issues.
Thank you again, for taking the time to think about and respond to my queries!

Your situation has many similarities to my own - I am generally a very upbeat, optimistic, even joyful person. My husband sounds much like yours - disappointed by the world, other people, life in general. He is not depressed, he simply has a very negative outlook, and as a result is usually unhappy, frustrated, and complaining.

I have found individual counseling to be extraordinarily helpful. At first I was very frustrated that my husband wouldn't go with me (well, he did initially, but not for long). Then I was frustrated that the therapist wouldn't let me spend sessions focusing on my husband and his behavior.

But when I finally began to focus on me (the one person whose thoughts/actions/behavior I do have control over) I realized what a good therapist can do: help me clarify my own thoughts. Recognize my own cognitive distortions. Understand my own emotions. Modify my own behavior.....well -- it's been far harder than I ever thought, but it's also been far more beneficial - in more ways - than I ever imagined.

So I just want to encourage you to keep going to counseling by yourself.